The Decision
by Pickwick12
Summary: Based on the Benedict Cumberbatch movie "Inseparable." Jean knows it's Charlie on her doorstep. What will she decide? Imagines a pre-history for the characters.    My friend wrote a great fic from a diff angle: /s/6454809/1/Separated
1. It Was Charlie

It was Charlie. Definite Charlie, from the wrinkle in his forehead to the way his eyes moved when he was bewildered. Joe never looked that way.

She stared, disbelieving. Three years. Three whole years. All she had ever heard was that Charlie was alive, Charlie was missing her, Charlie would try, really try. But he never did.

Every day, Joe was there. Joe was her rock, like he'd always been, even before the wedding. And she loved Joe. She had always loved Joe. That's why she'd accepted it. She knew that Nick would never know, at least she prayed every night he would never know. Joe was comfortable. Joe was safe. Joe would always be there for her, the most self-sacrificial man she'd ever known.

But there are different kinds of love. She loved Joe the way a man loves his ten-year-old dressing gown or a woman loves her favorite tea or a child loves his teddy bear. That's why Joe had been the best man at the wedding, the one she'd depended on to make sure everything was organized properly, to make sure Charlie was sorted.

Three years had not changed that love, though they had deepened it into something uncommon. Joe was no longer just her brother-in-law. He was her lifeline. He was the one who had rescued her when everything crashed. She couldn't do without him, not any more. She'd gradually come to realize that this was the way it was, the way it would always be.

But he wasn't Charlie.


	2. Different Kinds of Love

Different kinds of love. Her love for Joe could never turn to hate. It was warm when it should have felt hot, kind when it should have felt arresting, familiar when it should have felt new. The opposite of her love for Charlie.

Charlie. Three years on, that silly, average name could still make her pulse quicken. She could no longer tell if the reason was love or hate. Love that kept her thinking about him, wondering, hoping. Hate because he had pushed her out at the very moment she most wanted to help. For her. For her own good.

For her own good a husband who wasn't hers, a new father for her child. For her own good barred from helping the one person in the world she loved most. She would have traded the rancid scent of beer for the neat suits and rows of shoes that filled the closet she shared with Joe. She would have seen him through it, but he wouldn't let her.

She never told Joe about her feelings. It was an unspoken agreement between them. She honored his sacrifice, and he never asked about her red eyes or the nights when her side of the bed was unoccupied.

Now, as she looked into Charlie's eyes, pleading and uncertain, she realized how little hate has in common with indifference


	3. The Decision

She held her peace until Nick was safely outside, playing in his sandbox, a rare treat so late in the day. She could hear him jabbering happily to his toys, oblivious.

They stood in the front room of the house, she staring at the carpet, he at the drapes.

"Charlie."

He started, almost as if she had broken some kind of spell.

And then again, louder. "Charlie."

It was strange. She'd always thought she'd be the one crying, but there was Charlie, crouched on the floor, sobbing his heart out. She stared at him as if she was viewing a film, disconnected, the sight of his pain somehow banishing hers, or so it seemed.

She went to the kitchen and started washing the dishes. Charlie didn't leave.

As if in a dream, they did things the way they always had, a well-orchestrated drama. Dinner. Time with Nick. Bed time.

Bed time. Charlie changed into Joe's pajamas and settled into her side of the bed. Oh, right, Charlie liked that side. She climbed under the covers next to her husband, finding brittle humor in the idea that for the first time in three years, things were back to normal.

She woke in the middle of the night, as usual, and contemplated her normal routine: Get up, make tea, have a little cry, and then determine to carry on. That's how it always was with Joe, but the man sleeping next to her wasn't Joe.

As she stirred, she felt a warm hand reach out to tentatively arrest her movement, and she made a decision.

Draped across Charlie, she fell back to sleep in minutes.


End file.
